Interviews with liaisons about their work

Interview #1

How did you become an ACRL Liaison? How long have you been a liaison?
Sarah Wenzel, Bibliographer for Literatures of Europe & the Americas, was very interested in being the Modern Language Association liaison when it first became available two years ago. Upon being selected she immediately found that MLA was extremely receptive and gracious to her. This is Sarah’s second term and she is very excited about continuing her 3 year commitment. She heard about the volunteer position as a member of The Literatures in English Section and The Western European Studies Section of ACRL. This volunteer position is a perfect fit for her career objectives and also enhances the connection with the Modern Language Association members and ACRL.

Did you already have a relationship with this group and so had established connections or did you start from the beginning in terms of getting to know members and issues that the group is working on?
Before being a liaison, Sarah kept up to date with what was happening at the Modern Language Association, so she did have some idea of the issues that the group was dealing with. As a new liaison, however, Sarah had to start from the beginning to forge new relationships with its members.

“The overarching objective of the MLA is to support teaching and research of languages and literature as part of the humanities”.

Sarah’s goals are to:

Contribute to, and facilitate or enhance where possible, communication between literature scholars and librarians.

Help MLA members explore new forms and new models for scholarly communication. This might include digital production and open access.

Find ways to reach out to graduate students as well as letting them know that librarianship might be a good venue for them.

What kinds of activities do you do as a liaison? For example, do you attend the annual conference? Do you present a session at this conference? Do you contribute to this organization's newsletter or website?
With ACRL funding, Sarah has been very active in attending and presenting at MLA conferences. Her current responsibilities are convening the ACRL MLA International Bibliography Discussion Group and helping to plan for the 2013 MLA Convention as part of the Libraries and Research in Languages and Literature Discussion Group. One goal is to see more participation from non-librarians in the Libraries and Research in Languages and Literature Discussion Group. She is also an ex-officio member of this group and attends their business meetings.

What kind of advice would you give to a new liaison that is just starting this kind of professional relationship?
Patience! You can’t and ACRL doesn’t expect you to provide instant results.

Can you give us some examples of what you've done with this group? What worked well? What has not worked so well?
Being part of MLA gave her a crash course on their organizational culture. She has learned a lot and the programs she has helped facilitate seem to be successful. She very much enjoys interacting with people with diverse scholarly interests.

What did you like the most about your work as ACRL liaison?
Sarah feels like a matchmaker trying to get the two groups together! She likes getting to know other colleagues who are interested in the same subject she is and sharing her passion about librarianship to others. She hopes that her involvement will advance the collaboration between the two groups and raise awareness on academic campuses on the value of libraries.

Interview #2

How did you become an ACRL Liaison? How long have you been a liaison?
Danuta received the ACRL call for establishing a new liaison with SCUP right before ALA Mid-Winter. Since creating learning environments and space planning have been a part of Danuta’s work prior to this opportunity, she was very happy to submit her application.

Did you already have a relationship with this group and so had established connections or did you start from the beginning in terms of getting to know members and issues that the group is working on?
Since this is a new liaison, Danuta has had to start fostering this collaboration from the ground up, however, she wasn’t completely coming into college and university planning cold, but fortunately was already “marginally aware” of what SCUP was doing. She already was doing work with libraries and learning environments and college planning on campus, most recently at Drexel where the college already had people attending SCUP through different campus entities. She heard, for example from an architect affiliated with SCUP that square footage of campus learning environments could be compared. Danuta has since learned that SCUP has an even broader focus beyond issues of space and master planning to include strategic planning, institutional research for planning, and that membership consists of a diverse group of architects, campus strategic planners, institutional research analysts, administrators and faculty.

What kinds of activities do you do as a liaison? For example, do you attend the annual conference? Do you present a session at this conference? Do you contribute to this organization's newsletter or website?
Danuta just attended the annual conference, but before she did, she contacted SCUP leadership. She expressed her intention for going to the conference, including sizing up topics of interest, quick collaborations that might be forged, and asked what topics would be interesting to the library profession as well as the SCUP membership.

At the conference, Danuta found the orientation for first time conference attendees to be engaging, friendly, and a welcoming atmosphere at all levels of the organization. Volunteer and staff leadership in the organization participated in making new members feel welcome both in formal settings and informally at meals and breaks. A small addition to nametags and along with introductions and informal ice-breaker activities at meetings effectively welcomed new members. The conference setting included moderate sized [about 1500] attendee list, plenary and numerous concurrent presentations on diverse topics, and refreshments provided in the exhibit hall. Opportunities to interact with SCUP leadership were frequent and Danuta met the SCUP president, Executive Director, and regional chairs, enabling her to introduce her role as an ACRL Liaison. In addition, she networked with a few other librarians, some still in libraries and some who transferred into planning roles in their career.

After attending a “preparation for presentations” session, Danuta now has an awareness of the competitive standards for submitting presentations for the SCUP annual international conference. She definitely wants to submit proposals and articles for their publications about library and learning environments. Danuta looks forward to sharing a librarian’s perspective on college and university planning and learning environments. She welcomes participation to do so from other ACRL members.

What kind of advice would you give to a new liaison who just starting this kind of professional relationship?
Do your homework: learn the mission of the organization, its publications, go to at least one conference during one’s tenure as a liaison. Before you go to the annual conference, know what it is you are trying to accomplish. Be proactive and intentional about whom you want to meet in the organization’s leadership while you are there and plan what sessions you would like to attend. Before the conference, Daunta spoke with the executive director who suggested a couple of speakers to hear and found that scanning SCUP’s publications [for root “library*” helped her to prepare for what she wanted to get out of the conference. Also, don’t forget your business cards.

Can you give us some examples of what you've done with this group? What was worked well? What has not worked so well?
Though it is still early in the relationship, Danuta did say that it is important to keep up the momentum after the conference by making contact with people in SCUP, to follow-up with them in order to maintain a proactive ACRL and libraries advocacy role. In addition, Danuta says that it is important to report back to ACRL and share what SCUP is doing and has to offer librarians perhaps through publications like the ACRL newsletter.

What did you like the most about your work as ACRL liaison?
Danuta enjoys the stimulation of different perspectives on topic’s she’s already interested in and is excited about the potential learning and exchange of ideas between librarians and members of SCUP.

Interview #3

How did you become an ACRL Liaison? How long have you been a liaison?
This is the third year of her term as an ACRL liaison to NRC-FYEST.

Did you already have a relationship with this group and so had established connections or did you start from the beginning in terms of getting to know members and issues that the group is working on?
Yes, she had an established relationship with the National Resource Center. John Gardner, founder of the National Resource Center, spoke at the 2003 ACRL Conference on the need for librarians and libraries to play a more active role in the first year experience programs on college campuses. As a result of that challenge, Larry Hardesty, the Chair of the conference and a former ACRL President, edited a book of contributed essays on library instruction in the first-year: Hardesty, L. (2007). The role of the library in the first college year (Monograph No. 45). Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. Deb wrote a chapter in that book. Larry became the first liaison to the National Resource Center, and Deb succeeded him.

What kinds of activities do you do as a liaison? For example, do you attend the annual conference? Do you present a session at this conference? Do you contribute to this organization's newsletter or website?
She attended the Annual Conferences on the First-year Experience as a liaison, and presented one or two sessions at each conference. She was also asked to serve as a conference program proposal evaluator for two years.

What kind of advice would you give to a new liaison who just starting this kind of professional relationship?
Deb stated that it is essential to have the former liaison introduce the new liaison to executives and other members of the organization. Larry Hardesty had done such a terrific job as liaison that the executives at the Center were well disposed to a new ACRL Liaison. At the first conference she attended, she was invited to present a program on trends in information literacy for first-year students.

Can you give us some examples of what you've done with this group? What was worked well? What has not worked so well?
I'm working on a book which will be jointly published by the National Resource Center for the First Year Experience and ACRL. Its draft title is "A Profile of Information Literacy Programs in the First Year." We conducted a national survey in the fall of 2011 and received 510 usable responses. We sent our request for participation out to members of the ACRL Instruction Section. I'm working with Colleen Boff (Bowling Green State University) on this project. We met at the first FYE conference I attended as a liaison. We have preliminary results and will spend the spring semester analyzing those results and writing a literature review. This project will be published in the Resource Center’s new "Research Reports on College Transitions" series, and she hopes it comes out in early 2013.

What did you like the most about your work as ACRL liaison?
One fun aspect of this project was working on the survey design with Ryan Padgett of the National Resource staff (Assistant Director of Research, Grants and Assessment). He has tremendous expertise with surveys and data analysis. Deb learned a great deal about framing and sequencing questions to elicit the most meaningful data.

Interview #4

How did you become an ACRL Liaison? How long have you been a liaison?
During the spring term this year, Marilyn Ochoa saw the posting for the ACRL Liaison Program on the EBSS electronic mailing list/ ACRL website. She applied by submitting her CV, cover letter, and application. It underwent peer review with the EBSS board that made the final decision to select her as ACRL Liaison to SITE (Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education). In June she took the reins from her SITE ACRL Liaison predecessor at ALA Annual in June.

Marilyn became interested in the liaison program after she was already a member of SITE and of a broader parent organization AACE (Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education), of which SITE is a society. She wanted to explore SITE to give her additional opportunities in her area of responsibility and to work with faculty in teacher education outside the University of Florida. Marilyn thought that it would be a good way to be involved and make a significant impact by connecting with other librarians and teaching faculty in her area of interest.

Did you already have a relationship with this group and so had established connections or did you start from the beginning in terms of getting to know members and issues that the group is working on?
As a member of SITE and AACE, Marilyn has attended the AACE conference and served as a conference reviewer for an AACE conference in the past. She wanted to become more active in the organization and later joined the SITE Information Literacy Education Special Interest Group (SIG). When she became the SITE Liaison, Marilyn immediately contacted the former SITE Liaison for ACRL, Vanessa Earp, who met her at Annual to give her a better idea of what the role would entail. The discussion was useful to give Marilyn some liaison history, a librarian’s perspective on a teacher education association culture and general liaison timeline and responsibilities. Ms. Earp provided an email introduction to the teacher education council chairs to facilitate her transition into the liaison role. Making SITE member connections via email was challenging at first, so Marilyn advocates going to conferences to meet these contacts as a “critical” first step.

At the e-Learn conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education in October, Marilyn established a “face-to-face” relationship with AACE’s Communication Director to understand the AACE and SITE structure, conference administration and hints on how to manage the SIG for which she serves as Chair.

What kinds of activities do you do as a liaison? For example, do you attend the annual conference? Do you present a session at this conference? Do you contribute to this organization's newsletter or website?

Marilyn hit the ground running by attending two conferences this fall, both affiliated with SITE. In September, she attended the National Technology Leadership Summit (NTLS), in Washington, D.C. It is a working meeting that “brings together national leaders from educational associations, as well as editors of educational technology journals, directors of non-profit foundations, federal policy makers, and corporate representatives. . . The goal is to accelerate the meaningful impact of digital technologies in education for the 21st century (quote taken from the following website on 11.29.11 http://www.ntls.info/).” She was invited to attend since she serves as a SITE SIG Chair. This meeting was also an opportunity to discuss the upcoming SITE conference with the teacher education council chairs and other leaders of SITE.

Besides making an important connection with AACE’s Communication Director at the e-Learn World Conference in October, Marilyn also presented a peer review presentation, and though she had no direct SITE responsibilities at this conference, she was able to get a lot of her SITE SIG work done, especially with networking to prepare for the SITE Conference in March 2012. As SIG Chair, she is responsible for managing the review of proposals submitted under the Information Literacy category for the conference and making a final decision for acceptance. During the SITE conference in March she will facilitate the SIG meeting. Already, Marilyn tells me, “It is a lot of work!” She says that one of the ways she benefits from this work is that (whether as a reviewer or coordinator) she gains knowledge of what’s going in the field. In addition, as SIG Chair, Marilyn will work on the SIG’s SITE community pages.

What kind of advice would you give to a new liaison who just starting this kind of professional relationship?

Talk to the former Liaison to your organization! Gather from him/her your contact people and gain an understanding of the responsibilities required.

If you don’t have a predecessor find a person in a leadership position within the organization and/or find a librarian who might have already laid some groundwork in developing the network of contacts and expectations for your role.

Talk to the ACRL Executive Director and/or a Section Head of ACRL.

Can you give us some examples of what you've done with this group? What was worked well? What has not worked so well?
Since Marilyn is the new SITE ACRL Liaison, she said that making connections by going to conferences and meeting with others face-to-face is important. Sometimes it is hard to get money to travel from your own organization, but liaisons can request funding from the ACRL Liaisons Grants Committee to attend a conference.

What did you like the most about your work as ACRL liaison?
It is fulfilling. Through her Liaison work, Marilyn can “…explore more of [my] area of interest in a different way and facilitate a relationship with ‘the other side’,” such as with faculty in a different venue. During the NTLS meeting, Marilyn enjoyed brainstorming with faculty on mobile technology topics and is working with a group to develop a Planning Guide for Mobile Technology.

Interview #5

How did you become an ACRL Liaison? How long have you been a liaison?
At last year's ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., Mara Degnan-Rojeski decided to apply for the American Political Science Association (APSA)- ACRL Liaison position after she learned about it through the Law and Political Science Section (LPSS) of ACRL. In addition, at the APSA conference in 2010 she had the opportunity to meet their executive director.

Not only is she new to the role of Liaison as of September 2010, but the ACRL Liaison position with APSA is new relationship as well.

Did you already have a relationship with this group and so had established connections or did you start from the beginning in terms of getting to know members and issues that the group is working on?
Mara already had an established relationship with APSA. She first became interested in APSA as a graduate student studying for her Master of Science degree in Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois. Two years before her formal Liaison role, she talked to Lynn, a Political Science Librarian, who wisely advised her to join APSA if she were thinking of becoming a social sciences librarian. Ms. Degnan-Rojeski followed Lynn’s advice and joined APSA and has since attended two Teaching and Learning Conferences at APSA; two years ago she had the opportunity to teach a workshop at the conference, which according to Mara was a great experience.

What kinds of activities do you do as a liaison? For example, do you attend the annual conference? Do you present a session at this conference? Do you contribute to this organization's newsletter or website?
Mara has found that attending the Teaching and Learning conference, which is smaller than APSA’s annual conference, is a friendly environment and accessible way to network and relate to members her new role as an ACRL Liaison.

What kind of advice would you give to a new liaison who just starting this kind of professional relationship?
Ms. Degnan-Rojeski found that figuring out what her role as a new ACRL Liaison was confusing at the start because of recent organizational change. However, she found it extremely helpful to contact other more experienced ACRL social science Liaisons who could help her navigate the process. Mara stated that she learned a lot from reading an ACRL Liaison's report who attended a women's studies annual conference.

Can you give us some examples of what you've done with this group? What was worked well? What has not worked so well?
Mara stated that she is still working out ways to discover where she would be a good fit in APSA and has been targeting areas within the organization whereby she could be a part of discussions about information literacy and scholarly communication. She is also looking for meaningful ways to provide a valuable contribution to the organization, bringing awareness, tools and resources to the organization about those issues.

What did you like the most about your work as ACRL liaison?
Mara would like to be more involved in the APSA; she liked the organization before she became a Liaison to it. Mara really enjoys working with those in the Political Science discipline and as a member of the American Political Science Association. She enjoys serving as the APSA liaison because it means that she has more opportunities to work with the association.

Interview #6

How did you become an ACRL Liaison? How long have you been a liaison?
Ms. Ann Dutton Ewbank applied for the liaison position with two letters of recommendation, a letter of interest and her vita. She has been a liaison since 2009. An earlier AERA Liaison, Kate Corby, Ann’s mentor as an education librarian, encouraged her to apply since Ann already had a long-time involvement with American Educational Research Association (AERA).

Did you already have a relationship with this group and so had established connections or did you start from the beginning in terms of getting to know members and issues that the group is working on?
Since 2004, Ann has been heavily involved with two SIG’s in AERA, preceding her involvement with ACRL. Even so, she still felt like she was starting in a new role as ACRL Liaison because AERA is such a large and professionally diverse organization (over 25K members ranging from psychometricians to research faculty, etc). Ms. Ewbank found that she had to look at the organization more broadly and forge new relationships, which meant extending beyond established, long-standing personal interests in her SIGs. In order to do that she strategically planned what meetings to attend at the AERA conference and with whom she could effectively communicate her role as an ACRL Liaison. Before last year’s conference, she learned about AERA’s governance structure and decided to attend leadership meetings to alert leaders about her role and interest in collaborating. Ann realized that forming these connections take time.

What kinds of activities do you do as a liaison? For example, do you attend the annual conference? Do you present a session at this conference? Do you contribute to this organization's newsletter or website?
At last year’s conference, Ann met with various editors of journals, making it a point to meet with five journal editors a day in order to talk to them about open access issues. She handed each of them a non-library oriented brochure by SPARC about open access (see: http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/openaccess.pdf ) with her name, affiliation and email written across the top. She found it to be an eye-opening experience because approximately one-third of the editors cared about open access issues, one-third did not and 1/3 were openly hostile to the message. Ann presented a paper in 2010 and co-presented 2 papers in 2011 in addition to the other activities listed.

For the 2011annual AERA conference in New Orleans in April:

Preparation: Ann will be intentional about the message she wants to communicate and what opportunities that she wants to seek out. In order to do that she will spend a couple of hours keyword searching program for words like library, scholarly communication, information literacy. She strategically plots where she will go and who she will talk to.

Networking: Ann sent a note to EBSS librarians to see if anyone will be attending AERA and she will follow-up with them about their experience. In addition, she invited EBSS librarians to a session on the development on the AERA paper repository. Ann also asked for EBSS community feedback on what they would like her to focus on as the Liaison between ACRL and AERA. This year Ann planned on attending the AERA open leadership meeting at the beginning of the conference so that share her mission of ACRL Liaison collaboration with AERA leaders.

Educating: Ms. Dutton Ewbank will talk to editors of journals that she did not get to talk to at the last conference and share the message of Open Access.

To read about the results of this AERA conference see Ann Dutton Ewbank’s April 13th Report to ACRL Liaisons Coordinating Committee from AERA in ALA Connect. Abbreviated versions of her report can be found in the EBSS Newsletter or in the ACRL Insider.

What kind of advice would you give to a new liaison who just starting this kind of professional relationship?

Ann also advised to be prepared for the organization to not necessarily receive you with open arms and to understand and embrace your agenda. They have their own agenda and worldview, “but don’t let that discourage you,” she wisely said.

Can you give us some examples of what you've done with this group? What was worked well? What has not worked so well?
Ann’s biggest accomplishment this year was connecting with the chairs of the Research Use SIG and the Communication of Research SIG, who have agreed to join forces. Both SIGs have interest in scholarly communication and dissemination, and the Communication of Research SIG chair was thinking about letting the SIG die. Ann talked to both chairs and asked, “Why not combine our efforts? The SIGs have common goals.” So now they are looking at coordinating programming, putting on a pre-conference, and possibly combining the SIGs.

As for something that has been difficult:
“Talking to governance has been difficult. At the AERA conference this April, when Ann introduced herself to the president of AERA as the ACRL liaison she wrote that “the president automatically assumed I was an outsider, even though I have been active in the association for over 7 years. I’m going to have to try a different tactic with this.”

What did you like the most about your work as ACRL liaison?
“I love “connecting the dots” for people- I am well poised to serve as a boundary broker between our two associations. I believe this is because I have the Ph.D. and am an educational researcher, as well as a librarian. I can speak AERA’s language. This has been an advantage. I find this work personally and intellectually satisfying!”

Interview #7

How did you become an ACRL Liaison? How long have you been a liaison?
Ms. Sally Willson Weimer has been involved with ACRL for decades. Before the recent reorganization she served a term as Sections Council Chair providing leadership for approximately 17 sections. Since 2008, she has been a Liaison to the American Sociological Association (ASA).

Did you already have a relationship with this group and so had established connections or did you start from the beginning in terms of getting to know members and issues that the group is working on?
For Sally, what seemed to lay the groundwork for a relationship with ASA was her involvement with the University of California Sociological Consortium, which consists of sociology librarians from 10 campuses. That consortium asked the question: “How can we collaborate with faculty?” This led to attending annual ASA meetings and involvement in information literacy standards for sociology students in higher education.

What kinds of activities do you do as a liaison? For example, do you attend the annual conference? Do you present a session at this conference? Do you contribute to this organization's newsletter or website?
Through her involvement in Instruction and Information Literacy for ACRL- ANSS (Anthropology and Sociology Section), Sally has presented discussions, workshops and presentations at ASA annual conferences.

One of the most striking successes of her liaison work was the result of librarians networking and collaborating with ASA faculty. It led to a Departmental Resources Group within ASA, which created Assessment Tool for Sociology Collections and Services in Academic Libraries, a sociology collection survey. This survey was based on faculty and librarian shared goals. It ended up reconfigured as a checklist tool for ASA accreditation of sociology collections materials at academic programs (varying sizes of community college to research level universities are assessed using this tool) in the United States! It really is an amazing example of how the partnership between faculty, librarians and associations from a discipline can come together to have a profound impact.

Another role which taught Sally even more about the sociology discipline itself, in addition, to giving academic librarians visibility in the organization was her experiences as a roundtable coordinator in ASA. ASA has over 25 sections and as a very diverse organization, so Sally had the opportunity to garner a deeper understanding of the organization.

Even so, Ms. Willson Weimer expressed that one challenge to being a liaison is affording dues and annual meeting conference costs, especially in hard budgetary times. It may account for why there are not many librarians who are members of ASA.

What kind of advice would you give to a new liaison who just starting this kind of professional relationship?
Sally recommended that liaisons involve themselves in the organizations sections that deal with information literacy issues. Aligning oneself with key stakeholders can be very beneficial.

Can you give us some examples of what you've done with this group? What was worked well? What has not worked so well?
Sally commented that sometimes ASA faculty do not acknowledge her as a full-level colleague when they discover that she does not have a Ph.D. She recommended also that liaisons receive funding to have support resources in order to pay for travel and registration costs. For example, she noted that some librarians could not attend a librarian co-presentation ASA program in Atlanta that they really wanted to be a part of because they simply could not afford the $300 registration fee. With some of these current limitations, Sally asked the question: “How do liaison librarians network nationally?”

Sally commented the importance of communicating and constantly assessing whether goals of ACRL mesh with the strategic plans of ASA. In this, her relationship with ASA section chairs has been very helpful.

What did you like the most about your work as ACRL liaison?
An ASA faculty resource person, Tom Van Valey, has been a “wonderful” sponsor for ASA workshops. His feedback was instrumental in providing direction on the collection assessment tool. Sally is so appreciative of his support!